Page:The empire and the century.djvu/341

 The British Empire embraces 11,400,000 square miles, inhabited by 410,000,000 human beings, and divided into sixty colonies and dependencies, beside many protectorates.

These figures are symbols of a nebulous immensity, which must bewilder even a poet's imagination. We have conventional ideas, as we have conventional phrases; the untravelled man speaks of a sunrise on the Alps, or the roar of Niagara, or a battle in Manchuria, with the faintest notion of the awful phenomena indicated by his words. And so, in speaking of the 'British Empire,' we are apt to be content with commonplaces and generalities, having but a bare glimpse of the complexity and diversity of the multitudinous interests and activities, qualities, and forces, involved in that expression.

As early as 1681 the 'Postmaster for Foreign Posts' was directed to open regular communication between London (and Edinburgh) and Ireland: each letter to cost for 80 miles, 2d.; up to 140 miles, 4d.; above that distance, in England, 6d.; in Scotland, 8d.; to Ireland, 9d. By 1635 this officer, the famous Witherings, had established a post to most of the Irish towns. In 1685 he proposed the employment of regularly sailing packet-boats for letters. He paid good wages. In 1689 one of the barque-owners received £10 a month for the Irish service. Those were quiet times at sea. But our continental quarrels under the later Stuarts made it necessary to arm the packets. The common packet-sailor was in 1688 paid up to 80s. a month, was free from impressment, and was allowed a share of prize-money. The armed boats ran from Dover, Harwich, and Falmouth—when the wind and the Dutch permitted.

At first the Postmasters -General built their own packets, expressly for speed. These early 'ocean greyhounds' were intended to show the enemy their heels; but, like our torpedo-boats, they shipped, according to an old report, 'soe much water that the men are con-